Despot of Lanu - Review by archivebro

Alright, caught up on the thread. Despot of Lanu is an excellent first attempt for a narrative-styled civ quest with a choice of pre-existing factions.

I was surprised when anons went for what seemed like the “spymaster” faction up front as you were, but the surprise hasn’t impacted the story negatively from what I’ve seen.

Gameplay-wise, you’re hitting the right notes for the quest type you’re running. Map of the strategic layer, a spread of actions to build up economy, infiltrators, military, or attack, and opportunities for both diplomacy and hostilities with the various factions. Though I do question the viability of the diplomatic layer, all factions anons have interacted with so far at the strategic level have effectively killed off any chance of a second contact with their actions. The last one was a result of anon actions, but given the existing alliances at play it’s fairly obvious they made a correct call. What I can’t fully tell is if this mechanic being weak is more a result of anon choices in the past or the nature of the factions you’ve created.

Narrative-wise, a core cast of characters with many minor details waved away by the MC when actions are chosen. A good fit for a “ruler” to keep the focus tight. The drip-feed of additional narrative scope from Numbers to the plot against Fu by family members is handled at a good pace in that I’m impatient to learn more but not unreasonably so. The only possible miss I’ve seen was early on, in which anons had to decide whether to support the police or Kommune in early fighting. It was done without any influence of the cult’s past relationship or standing between the two, and I’d have thought it would have come up when making those decisions. They’ve existed for a while after all. That said, simply letting anons decide based on tactical considerations isn’t wrong, especially since their faction is insular and may not have the info needed to make a more strategic decision.

Other small things that pop out to me are a general lack of “infiltration” options similar to the diplomatic ones at the high level. A spy agency was set up long ago but most options to use or use it seem to come on specific missions or from write-ins. The map is color-coded by group, but could use a little legend identifying who is what color. That’s just a small QoL thing, no big deal. Resources aren’t in any maps that I saw, and I’m wondering if they were planned out in advance or if you’ve made some up since starting the quest. If it is the latter then keep that in mind if you run another quest in this style. It’s bound to come up as a point in games like this.

Since this seems like it’ll be over in a thread or two I’ll stick around as a voter. I’m still waiting for CoreQM to boot up their next thread anyway so I’m down to one quest right now.

For other quests like this, Simple Space Empire Quest is in a similar vein. Slightly more crunch with less narrative. For more just general good shit civ quest stuff I’ll remind people Ogre Civ existed is probably worth a read if you haven’t done it already.